I find this sort of flippant posturing and minimization much more disturbing than a higher-profile-than-usual disappearance.

Acting as if these horrific, nebulous governing systems can be reduced to the image of a Saturday-morning cartoon villain, an infantile mustache-twirler angrily shaking his fist at the TV screen.

It is not “offense”. A system does not get “get mad”. It constantly sniffs for the slightest hint of dissent, any figure that might even come close to nudging public opinion the wrong way, and grinds it to dust.

It’s no different from every other country’s power-seeking and preserving systems, just with a much more sensitive trigger-finger, and that seemingly excessive sensitivity and reactivity is simply because they can. Not because some CCP higher-up has a fragile ego.